Windows Sound System was a sound card

Sound card

A sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...

 specification developed by Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 for use in their Windows 3.0 with MPC extensions. WSS featured support for up to 16-bit 48 kHz digital sampling, better than the contemporary Sound Blaster Pro. Also, the WSS featured RCA analog audio outputs, an uncommon feature among sound cards of this era.

The WSS 2.0 drivers released in 1993 included a DOS driver, WSSXLAT.EXE, that provided Sound Blaster 16 compatibility for digital sampling, however they did not provide support for FM or wavetable synthesis.

Much like today's Intel High Definition Audio

Intel High Definition Audio

Intel High Definition Audio refers to the specification released by Intel in 2004 for delivering high-definition audio that is capable of playing back more channels at higher quality than previous integrated audio codecs like AC'97...

, the actual hardware was standardized as well. WSS was based on Crystal Semiconductors CS4231 codec

Codec

A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...

 chip

Integrated circuit

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

.